shop updates

As promised, some new burritos have been posted to the store..more to come
later today and tomorrow, so hold off ordering until Monday!

until then, ponder this incredible photo take by my friend Lynn in California. Doesn't it look like a Turner painting ? What is that little tiny fire?
This staggers me.

Sunny Jim gives direction...

I've been thinking about the creative dichotomy I work in with fabric, swinging from making art cloth that, (ostensibly) winds up in art quilts and making traditional bedwear. "Sunny Jim" above and "Big Muddy" below have reminded how both approaches meet in the middle with satisfying results - putting my art to work while soothing my frugal Yankee work ethic. I work...so does my art.

Somehow, in my morning blog slogging I came across Amy Ellis' Bloggers Quilt Festival. With only hours to participate I'm linking up Sunny Jim. Did I mention there are Prizes to win? And later spend some time rummaging around here too.


Winter looms long and dreary so I plan on working out ways to incorporate many of the fabrics I have been dyeing over the recent months. Stabilizing "tender" cloth with be part of the that challenge- don't want my blankets falling apart in the first round of wash and dry! 

kitchenworx - day two

I remembered to cover the kitchen table with a rescued white cotton blanket first thing instead of a stack of newpapers...good stuff will come of it eventually.

These pieces have just come steaming from the oven after having my own soywax/dye blocks shaved over them. They have to cool and dry completely before the next step and there may not be time today to move to the next step.Grrr.


Grace wrote to me about the difficulty of cutting into a piece of cloth that has been dyed or otherwise changed and become (in her eyes) a unique and beautiful piece of art, no further manipulation called for.

I know what she means. I have a small stack of good sized pieces that I just can't bring myself to force or otherwise organize or incorporate into something else.
What to do?
What do you do?

beach inspired experiments

Moving on with my surf and jellyfish dyeing experiments - this piece turned out predictably erratic and uninspired.

This morning I fired up the kitchen dyeworks, broke out the soywax and set to work.

I did not stop to take pictures of these two in progress but spent the better part of the morning transforming just two 20"x20" pieces of damask with a series of wax resists and overdyeing.

Time was I measured the success of a dyefest in quantity as much as quality. Working within the restraints of the kitchen will add a new dimension of FOCUS . blah blue becomes .........

 

and differing set of steps produced a phantasm!

Go Here for a closer look. yes, I did take notes.

back to the world

I got in from Destin late Sunday night after an exciting (not) eight hour charge over the back roads of GA. We missed our exit off FL 10 and wound up crow-flying it north across the south eastern border of GA and taking 30 mile stretches of industrial farm roads at break neck speed because there was almost no one else on the road and Jake saw to it that my Honda had an alignment, among other preventive measures. Who knew it could go 85-90 mph? On the  way down, at saner speeds, I wrung 419 miles out of one 10 gallon tank.  Along the way home, fields of cotton ready for harvest looked like fields of snow. I sent my sister a picture of the beach and she sent back a shot of their deck covered with snow!

We went to the 16th annual Destin Festival of the Arts held at my favorite beach, Henderson state park. Most of the artists were there to sell interior decoration to condo owners who never stay in their own condos and there did appear to be buying going on.

I spoke with one painter, Bill Billingsley, whose impressionist seascapes I found spellbinding. In a genre that was invented to sooth and lull, his work was compellingly beautiful. I wish I could find some links or images to share but Bill spends his time building his own (large!) canvases and painting instead of farting around on the internet..go figger! A lady at the fair offered to buy the shirt off my back. I declined.

I have idle (read "lottery winnings") fantasies about moving to this sugar sand beach and making art. The truth is I would spend all my time lolling about the beach and surf, grow gills and probably swim off under the moonlight one night with a pod of sea turtles.
Time to get back to work.

surf dyeing (with jellyfish)

This turned out to be much more of a symbolic gesture rather than the dye fest I had planned. Although the sun was strong so, was the wind and temperatures were probably not optimal for good results. The water was warm enough for me to go swimming but the jellyfish wandering about (they seemed to follow me) put that notion on hold. Once I brought the cloth back up to the beach I spread it out, sprinkled it with a little soda ash and added a little dye concentrate already in solution (dye powder would have been impossible in the wind). To my horror - and where was my brain?- much of it went straight into the sugar white sand below. I quickly rolled up the cloth, sand, dye and all and stuffed it into a baggie. Then another baggie just for more stained sand. Didn't want to be lynched by the locals. Still, with more planning and warmer conditions, I want to give this another chance. Results? Tomorrow after I unpack.

to the beach!!

Destin, Florida...my fans await me!

packing....

the things you find when you pick up the studio!

I'll take this along and stake it out in the surf and see what becomes of it. 

dazzled

It's been a long time since I was stupefied by a blank canvas. Time was I worked on really large canvases with acrylic - hammered the wood, stretched and gessoed the canvas myself. All that preparation gave me time to think, from a distance, about what would come next so I don't remember getting the willies over acres of nothingness.


This is something else.
A big box of vintage cloth arrived yesterday courtesy of my scout, Grace of the American West (who called her that? How appropriate). Colin helped me unfurl one last night and Jim estimated it to be 120" square. Shimmering.

As I sat and went through all the pieces this morning in the sunlight the stillness set in. What more could I do? What shades and hue? The hubris of my plans appalls me, yet the subversive witch cackles, rubs her paws together and daydreams in butternut and violet, storm gray and moss, blood orange and peaches.

If it wasn't for my GoodMan, I'd take the veil.

monday, monday

I long to just sit down with this and focus on it for a while, as unfocused as I feel it's become, but it's a Monday full of chores and obligations - the usual boring stuff we all have to deal with.

I've decided to take on the Excess in my life starting with my walk-in closet. There will be NO pictures. So far, two bags for the trash and two for the Goodwill- it's time I gave back some of what I've taken out of there.

sunday prayer flags

that's EQ5 above and EQ6 below


I love it when solutions, or just new ideas, come in dreams.

these are three of the cloth burritos quick stitched into prayer flags and strung in my crepe myrtle grove out front. My dog walking neighbors thought I was taking a novel approach to decorating for Halloween....

I machine basted them to cotton strips just so people could get a better idea of just what was in one of those rolls. Scale is still an issue...most of these pieces are 7 to10 inches wide.

one of the October burritos....they are down now, safely back in the house.

a book arrived yesterday..I leafed through it a bit and am kind of afraid to read closely, sponge brained as I am...